CLASS 2nd Edition to Drive Continuous Quality Improvement for Equity-Centered Instruction

• In Event: Enhancing Equity and Improvement: A Deep Dive Into CLASS (Classroom Assessment Scoring System) 2nd Edition Reliability and Validity

Abstract

In the 2023-24 school year, Teach For America (TFA) adopted CLASS 2nd Edition (CLASS-2E; Teachstone, 2022) across its 43 sites in 35 states, which predominantly serve low-income communities, as its primary coaching tool to drive continuous quality improvement (CQI). TFA, one of the nation’s largest producers of teachers, chose CLASS due to extensive evidence of reliability and validity (Kane, T. J., & Staiger, 2012; LoCasale-Crouch, et al, 2018; Allen, et al, 2015) and flexibility across grade levels and content areas (Hamre, et al, 2014), and 2nd edition specifically due to its equity-centered design revisions. CLASS2-E is organized into three dimensions: Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support, scored on a scale from 1-7 (7=high).

TFA intentionally operationalized CLASS-2E as a formative tool for CQI instead of accountability. Observations were positioned to provide rigorous evidence of classroom interactions for coaching conversations, not as evaluative measures of teacher performance. CLASS-2E scores were never shared with teachers; teachers were instead given holistic feedback for growth based on evidence collected during the observation.

All TFA PreK-4th grade teachers were eligible for observation (n=894). Observations took place at three time points: in the fall, winter, and spring. 832 teachers (93%) received at least one observation, and 450 teachers (50%) were observed at all three time points. Table 1 reports average scores.

A four-level multilevel model was fit in R using the lme4 package (Bates, et al, 2015). Statistically significant growth was observed, as reported in Table 2. Additionally, we sought to explain variance in CLASS-2E scores at the within-individual, between-individual, school, district, and region levels.

For the Emotional Support and Classroom Organization domains, 40% of variance reflects differences between teachers, suggesting reasonable reliability for CLASS-2E to understand differences in these domains between individual teachers. 40% of variance is within-individual, suggesting further research is needed into individual teacher growth trajectories. The remaining 20% of variance is split across the school, district, and region levels (see Table 3).

Variance in the Instructional Support domain is differently distributed. 20% of variation reflections differences between teachers, suggesting CLASS-2E is not as helpful for understanding the difference in instructional skill between individual teachers. 44% of variance is within-individual and could point to differences between individual lessons or observation cycles; this is another area for continued research. The remaining 36% of variation is attributable to the school, district, and region levels (see Table 3). Interestingly, more variation in Instructional Support is attributable to the district and region levels, which is intuitive given that curricular decisions are often made at the district level. This suggests that CLASS-2E is sensitive to the local context.

This study provides initial evidence that CLASS-2E is an effective tool to measure CQI across a national sample of PK-4th grade teachers serving low-income areas. Evidence of sensitivity to growth over time, and initial evidence of sensitivity to individual and environmental contexts is promising. Further research is needed to better understand sources of variation in observation scores and sensitivity of the tool to these sources of variation.

Authors

• Grant Van Eaton, Teach For America, Inc.

• Robin Greatrex, Teach For America, Inc.

• Brendon Krall, Brown University